[53] The regiment sent back with the prisoners was the 63rd, the one borrowed from Victor: it had not been at the siege, but supporting Latour-Maubourg at Albuera. The garrison left in Olivenza was one battalion of the 64th.
[54] Except the two nearest the river, San Vincente and San José, which are a little lower.
[55] Wellington, Dispatches, vii. p. 98, dated January 1st, to Charles Stuart reports that from Cadiz advices of December 23 he is aware that a concentration is taking place at Seville, though Mendizabal knows nothing of it.
[56] Wellington’s covering letter to La Romana’s dispatch is in Wellington Dispatches, vii. p. 99.
[57] Wellington, Dispatches, vii. 143.
[58] Ibid., vii. 165, where a letter to Henry Wellesley fixes the resolve to send off these troops to ‘yesterday,’ i. e. January 19th.
[59] Viz.
| La Carrera (including Carlos de España) about | 2,500 | infantry. |
| Charles O’Donnell’s division | 5,000 | ” |
| Remains of Mendizabal’s division, which had thrown four battalions into Olivenza and two into Badajoz | 3,500 | ” |
| Butron’s cavalry, about | 2,500 | cavalry. |
| Madden’s Portuguese cavalry brigade | 950 | ” |
| Artillery | 450 | artillery. |
| Total | 14,900 | in all. |
[60] Wellington calls the disease ‘spasms of the chest’; the Spanish authorities term it an aneurism.
[61] See especially Wellington to Liverpool, January 26th, in Dispatches, vii. 196-7. The corresponding letter to Mendizabal is less important, because it is written to a Spanish correspondent.